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Drive Spotter’s Startup Story

Drive Spotter is a startup focused on moving the world’s freight™ and a graduate of the Global Insurance Accelerator in Greater Des Moines (DSM), Iowa. Founder Chris Augeri shares the story of shifting from video-centric messaging to a dynamic mapping company featuring video on the side.

Shifting Perception

The refusal of new companies to change can sometimes lead to a startup’s demise. Once Drive Spotter shifted their marketing and messaging to better reflect their data, potential clients and early customers were able to get behind the startup.

Delegation

When you can’t manage everything yourself, you have to start delegating. With another team being built at the branch in Detroit and another location in Omaha, Chris has begun to delegate and started building in feedback opportunities through Slack and in-person conversation.

Startup Pivots

Is it harder to sell a pivot internally to the team or externally to customers? Drive Spotter has had three major pivots: a hardware/software pivot, a commodity hardware to mobile app pivot and a marketing shift of saying Drive Spotter was a mapping company. Moving from hardware to software wasn’t difficult because it was just a two-man team at the time of the change. When Drive Spotter moved to a mobile app, it was the customer that sold them on the pivot, while when the company shifted their marketing, the internal team shift was the most difficult because the team had been working long days leading up to the Techstars demo day.

Hear the stories of other small business and startup business owners in the community in The Partnership’s Small Business Resources Hub or sign up for the NAME TBD newsletter to stay connected for information about upcoming events, other resources and the latest announcements in the small business community in DSM.